Tag: love
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Gone are the rosy visions of a
white tulle gown and a grinning groom.
A fat pink baby wrapped in a quilt
I sewed in an effort to stem the tides of
my impatience through an endless, sticky
summer.

And a sunny, grassy yard
lined with berries and bird feeders.

These days I dream less of love, that
fickle thing.

More the clatter of passersby in
Venetian canals. The ache and throb of my legs
as I round the top of a postcard mountain.
Crisp reds and yellows and greens of a
farmer’s market in the equally crisp
morning air.

Still that sunny, grassy yard, though.
Lined with berries and bird feeders.

And seeing and hearing and tasting things
that make my heart feel as if it will burst.
Things that make my fingers reach for a pen.

And maybe love. Maybe still. A different kind.

Steady. Patient. Arrived. An envelope.

Or a symphony. Not the rush of youth’s tides.
A building of things, a minutely increasing
everything that becomes a masterpiece.

And the isn’t-this-world-beautiful kind of
love. Awe. At the masterpieces that are
already here.

And the final, beautiful discovery that
giving is more satisfying than receiving.

Giving, giving, giving every piece of me.
Sending life out into the world in
notebooks and hearty laughs and weeping
willows. And eventually this very soil.

Before I forget to tell you later, before this begins to fade until we cannot quite remember it accurately, like a dream, I should say these words that bubble up to the surface and perch on the tip of my tongue…

Before one of us finally leaves for good, flies off dreamily or scorches a tongue on an argument or swiftly retreats into the shadows, I should say something about the here and now, about what is… (Soon it will only be what was.)

I should say that loving you has been the best part of my life. I should say that I carry a little piece of you with me every day. I should say that I still wrap my anxieties in thoughts of you, the way I used to fold myself into your arms and escape the weary days. I should say I learned that no one is really right, and that’s okay because the important thing is to be happy. And to love. And to beat on with the rhythms of our hearts and the currents of the rivers and the flutters of winged things.

I saw a couple embracing this morning. It wasn’t a hug; it was more of an intertwined tension, an electric current moving between their bodies. She fell into him like a rag doll and he pulled her up and in like he was trying to prop up her very soul, like he was trying to mend her whole being by wrapping himself around her. It was stunning. I felt like I was intruding by watching such an intimate display of emotion, but I couldn’t look away. There it was, a bit of poetry out among the traffic, men in suits bustling past them, the raging California sun beating hot on their skin. How simultaneously sad and lovely.

I’d like to do this differently. I won’t say better… because it’s too soon to give weight to anything. But I will certainly take Different.

I will go into this without second-guessing myself or double-checking you. I’d like to spend more time enjoying you than worrying about this. I’d like to just be. Here. Now. In your living room, laughing and cuddling and kissing, easily – like these collisions of Man and Woman and Attraction and Flirtation have never been any other way but easy.

It broke on a black winter night, the kind
that is so silent it feels like the pulse
of the earth has stopped. There was no wind, no
incessant barking of the neighbor’s dog,
no distant whoosh of passing traffic on
the highway across the glassy white field.

The only audible signs of life came
from him, the staccato of his knife on
the wooden board, and his faint, even breaths -
the legato. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Smooth in,
smooth out. Soon the water cymbal would hiss…

She came in and sat at the end of the
table. He glanced up, offered a small smile.
A pause in the rhythm. Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Pause. Smooth in, smooth out. She met his glance,
then greeted the napkin in front of her,
ran her fingertip along the crisp fold.

Tap, tap, tap, tap. Smooth in, smooth out. And then
she said it. So flatly, not with the itch
of a tongue heavy with news, nor the hushed
telling of a secret (though it was both).
Tap, tap, tap, tap. Pause… He didn’t take a
breath until he felt the burn in his lungs.
A sharp inhale. No more cutting. He waited
for her, for the words to rush in like a
guest who is late to Friday dinner.

But the room was as silent as the earth.
He felt the burn in his lungs again but
didn’t inhale. He needed to hear her,
needed those words to arrive, peel away
the silence the way he unwound his scarf
in their mudroom when he came in from the
cold. He waited, the knife frozen in flight.
The pause became a halt. The crescendo.

When he could stand the burn no longer, he
inhaled. Clunk. The knife fell onto the board.
As if on cue, the hiss of the water
came in like a cymbal. They both looked at
the pot instinctively. Then at each other.
Her eyes darted to the napkin, then the
mudroom door – and he realized she wasn’t
going to say anything more; the words
weren’t on their way. She was already
set on her exit. She had already
cocooned herself in enough layers to
keep out the chill. He began to feel how
thin his sweater was, like paper. How thin
the air felt each December. How thin he
had become to her, that he could be wiped
away in one deft motion, like the frost
that clung to the windows over the stove.

He moved toward her, reached out – why? Why was
he reaching for her when she couldn’t be
held onto…? The sound stopped him. Glass. Something
breaking. He scanned the floor. The pieces were
little kaleidoscopes, fragmenting the
navy pattern on the floor below them.
He must have knocked down something… He lifted
his gaze, to ask her to help him clean up.

At the end of the table, a chair sat
vacant, pushed back haphazardly so the
left leg rumpled the edge of the rug, worn
from a decade of that same chair being
pushed back against it. And on the table,
an empty space where the napkin had been.

I Feel Fancy

That Legal & Karmic Stuff

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